A blog about the history, current state, and the future of the electric guitar and tube-based amplifier combo and how this de rigueur musical instrument that matured during the Rock N' Roll-era continues to both evolve and refuses to die.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Even though there are “insurmountable” logistical issues
that preclude their widespread use in live performance situations, are
mutilated loudspeaker cones the ultimate sounding electric guitar distortion
effect?

By: Ringo Bones

Tales of guitarists intentionally mutilating the loudspeaker
cones of their combo amps by slashing it with razor blades, poking strategic
holes using a very sharp pencil or by other means in order to obtain a “unique tone”
seems to be as old as the history of Rock N’ Roll music itself. Back in 1956,
guitarist Paul Burlison of the Johnny Burnette Trio “accidentally” discovered
that a partially broken loudspeaker cone of his combo amp that was damaged
during transport during one of their band’s tours resulted in a distinctive tone
that Burlison and the rest of the band found “pleasing” – i.e. resulted in a
two-tone sound that produced quite clean trebles but sounded really distorted in
the low frequencies which the band likened to a horn section playing full blast
– but music critics and reviewers at the time noted that the resulting guitar
sound as “horrible”.

During the late 1950s, guitarist Link Wray intentionally
poked strategically placed holes in his electric guitar amp’s loudspeaker cones
to further distort his tone. And by the way this was during the time when PP3 /
9-volt battery powered guitar distortion stomp-boxes were yet to be invented.
In 1964, a fuzzy and somewhat distorted sound gained widespread popularity
after guitarist Dave Davies of The Kinks used a razor blade to slash his combo
amp’s loudspeaker cones to produce the distinctive tone in the band’s single “You
Really Got Me” – an act which also got The Kinks dubbed as the grandfathers of
Heavy Metal Music.

Even though intentionally mutilating loudspeaker cones of
electric guitar amps to produce a distinctive tone seems to be a still esoteric
practice a few years later, the practice probably got more popular after Brian
Eno slashed the loudspeakers of the guitar amp to ribbons using a razor blade
that was used during the recording session of his Nerve Net album. Eno
described the tone as a little bit like those African instruments called mbiras
where you have little tongues of metal that you play with your thumbs and
around the base of each tongue is a piece of wire that rattles and buzzes as
you play. Eno liked the resulting sound which he described as “this kind of
halo that you can get on a sound. And it’s a halo of distortion really.” Thanks
to Brian Eno, the most widely known use of razor blade slashed electric guitar
loudspeakers in a recording session in recent years was Sonic Youth’s remake of
The Carpenter’s “Superstar” in the 1994 album If I Were A Carpenter. Given that
intentionally mutilating the loudspeaker cones of your electric guitar amp –
why isn’t it in widespread use?

Setting aside a loudspeaker cone or a whole guitar combo amp’s
loudspeaker cone to be intentionally
mutilated might seem viable in recording studio situations, but if you are a
touring guitarist or yet a guitarist who carries his or her 40-pound combo amp
to a gig night after night, the very exercise seems to engender some logistical
nightmares. The most obvious of which - is the realization which sadly only
dawns upon to anyone who had performed such a stunt for a long period of time –
is that a slashed loudspeaker cone or a pencil-poked loudspeaker cone’s timbre
changes over time, especially if you play it loud. The timbre may change for
the better or for the worse but you can never go back to a tone that was
produced last week or three days ago – unless of course you have recorded that
in a recording studio and it is also the very reason why bass guitar players have not experimented with mutilating their loudspeaker cones by either slashing it with razor blades or poking holes in them using a sharpened pencil. It looks like “mutilated loudspeaker cones” are for
recording studio use only and leading digital guitar effects manufacturers
still haven’t perfected an electric guitar effect that consistently replicates
a mutilated electric guitar amp loudspeaker cone that can be used in live gigs.